| Description |
The United States (US) spends more per capita on prescription drugs than other high-income countries (Sarnak, Squires & Bishop, 2017). Yet, the high cost of drugs does not translate to better health outcomes. In fact, the US has a significantly lower life expectancy at birth and higher death rates for avoidable or treatable conditions compared to other high-income countries (Gunja, Gumas & Williams, 2023). While various factors contribute to these poor health outcomes, access to affordable medications is a major consideration. The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA, 2022) is a recent policy that aims to address the issue of affordable access to prescription medication by granting negotiation power to Medicare. However, for these negotiations to be effective, it is important to examine drug pricing policies in nations that have successfully negotiated drug prices. In this paper, I contend that the US has an obligation to provide affordable access to prescription medications, alleviate concerns about stifled pharmaceutical innovation, and finally, I review the process of drug negotiations in the United Kingdom and apply them to the proposed Medicare negotiation policy. |
